RPM International Inc. (NYSE:RPM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 6 of 12

Frank Sullivan: Sure. Again, as I indicated, we are seeing €“ and we have seen pretty consistently for the last, I would call it, four months or five months POS, so consumer takeaway in the negative mid €“ low to mid-single digits. I would anticipate for us that we will see some improvement there, both in terms of consumer takeaway. Also I think by the time we get through this spring, both we and our customers will have completed inventory adjustments. So, if there is a purchase, it will be reflected on our sales as opposed to seeing a difference between consumer purchasing and lower unit volume growth relative to internal and external inventory adjustments and we are playing offense. We have got new products, a new patented spray foam product going into a number of our retailers with DAP.

We have a patented new spray nozzle that will first be introduced in Stops Rust that’s going to be shipping in the coming weeks, and you will see it at retailers throughout the summer, by the end of the summer, early fall, we should be pretty much throughout our retail distribution. We are excited about that, and we are going to start a larger advertising and promotion campaign in May around that, it will carry us through the summer. So, we are hopeful for some pretty good performance there and that we will see an uptick in that area. And then the last piece is to an earlier question, the share loss, particularly at Home Depot that we experienced in the last 12 months, we believe it’s over. Time will tell whether we get that business back. But we are led to believe that that position is now where it’s going to be.

Mike Harrison: Great. Thanks very much.

Frank Sullivan: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please go ahead.

Frank Sullivan: Good morning Ghansham.

Ghansham Panjabi: Thank you. Good morning Frank and everybody else. Hey Frank, just kind of stepping back, I mean obviously, you sell into several end markets that are sensitive towards interest rates and of course, rates are up quite a bit over the past year. Is there anything notable that you see different this go run with higher rates, or is everything essentially playing out, how you thought it would based on historical patterns? And I am sort of asking just to €“ in context of raw materials, which have a fair amount of stickiness

Frank Sullivan: So yes, first of all, I think at least from a manufacturing perspective, it’s not unique to us, you could it in different segments. We are in a good old fashion recession. And as I commented earlier, I think more cyclical businesses, certainly, we are seeing it in our more cyclical businesses are experiencing that and are going to do so for the rest of calendar €˜23. So, my guess at all these fancy economists to call recessions, as you will recall, they typically look, I don’t know, in August or September and say, hey, we are in a recession and it started in February. So, I think we are there. I think what’s different this time is what we have talked about on the past call and on this call, we have never experienced the broad destocking that we have had to address here, both with our inventory levels and with inventory levels in our industrial segments and channels.

Page 6 of 12